There was snow closer than ever (this season) yesterday morning but it turned out to be a fine day and today is more of the same early on with the sun out and doing it's thing. Inevitably, the snow that was closing in on the village has been retreating and there's now white down to around 700m once again with perhaps 20cm or so up top. In fact a quick look at the Nozawa webcams shows some lines on the Yamabiko course that look suspiciously like ski trails and so someone has obviously been up there and got in some early sliding. Nice.

There should be more snow on the upper slopes tomorrow (rain in the village?) but after that temps are set to rise and it might get quite mild late weekend and early next week.

For today though we can expect a high of around 11 degrees in the village.